ROADCHECK IS LESS THAN 2 WEEKS AWAY.
If you missed CCJ's AMA with CVSA Inspection Specialist Jeremy Disbrow, click below to receive a recorded version. We received almost 300 questions and this 60 minutes could be a powerful tool in getting and keeping your trucks compliant.
Barring an unforeseen statistical anomaly, brake violations will be among the top equipment out of service violations found during the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) International Roadcheck campaign May 14-16.
There has been a shift in recent years toward disc brakes for numerous reasons, ease of maintenance among them, but CVSA Roadside Inspection Specialist Jeremy Disbrow – who joined CCJ, in partnership with Bestpass, for an hour long question and answer session around Roadcheck – said disc brakes are certainly not immune to out of service conditions.
"I don't have any specific data on that right now off the top of my head. I can tell you, (disc brakes) definitely impact the numbers in some ways, but in other ways, it can increase violations," he said. "And what I mean by that is, a disc brake is typically going to have a direct coupled air chamber, so there's no exposed pushrod. So... brake adjustment, those numbers tend to go down, because an inspector can't measure the pushrod travel when there's no pushrod to measure. On the flip side, there's other components that are going to be looked at a little bit more carefully, such as the pads, the rotors, things like that. So while you may see violations in one area go down, if they're not properly maintained, the foundation brake components, we can see more violations of those, like cracks, and things like that."
Disbrow noted that one of the focuses of this year's enforcement blitz ( tractor protection systems) is "a really important brake safety component that they're targeting."
